Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> Nuts & Boalts

Law Students

: Nuts & Boalts

Yoo Too Should Keep an Eye on This

About a year ago the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility disclosed it had been investigating whether John Yoo and Judge Jay Bybee's "Torture Memos" failed to meet the Department's ethical standards for professional responsibility. The report has not yet been made public, but it's leaking (see also here), and if the leaks are accurate, the report will be startling when it is released:

Apparently, among other things the report recommends state bar associations consider disbarring the authors because, according to the report, the memos departed so far from the Justice Department's own standards as to be a breach of professional responsibility.

More startling still are rumors that the report contains emails from from senior officials in the Bush administration dictating the results and outcome of the memos while they were being written. (No surprise there, unless you are a cynic like me -- in that case, you're stunned that the documentation wasn't destroyed.) Those emails, if real, are significant because the Bush Administration's defense has always been a blend of necessity and reliance (last 40 seconds of clip): "Everything we did was -- you know, it had legal -- legal opinions behind it. . . . I got legal opinions that said whatever we're going to do is legal." It should go without saying that a reliance defense begins to look thin (isn't the test reasonableness?) if the Administration asked for carte blanche in advance.

I do not know when the report will be released. But the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is waiting for Yoo and Bybee to contribute their version of the story before it is finalized and sent to Attorney General Eric Holder, has recommended the report be made public when it is finalized. This is something to keep an eye on.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on February 17, 2009 (boomark / email).